A Chinese resident illegally residing in South Korea was sentenced to prison for aiding in voice phishing crimes by installing a caller ID tampering repeater device in a Jeju hotel.
According to the Jeju District Court on the 2nd, a Chinese defendant was recently sentenced to two years and two months in prison by the Jeju District Court’s Criminal Division 2 (Judge Bae Gu Min) on charges of violating the Telecommunications Business Act and the Immigration Control Act.
The defendant is accused of helping a voice phishing organization’s overseas call center make calls to an unspecified number of people in South Korea, not from internet phone numbers starting with 070 but from domestic mobile phone numbers starting with 010, for a total of 22 times from October 29th to November 8th last year.
He installed the caller ID tampering repeater device in two hotel rooms in Jeju City by connecting it to the internet, turning on the relay device every morning, and turning it off again in the evening.
The defendant had been illegally staying in Jeju after entering the country without a visa on June 6th last year. He committed the crime after receiving an offer from an unidentified member of a voice phishing organization in mid-October, saying, “I will pay you 150,000 won ($130) per day.”
The court said, “Considering the serious damage caused by voice phishing crimes that systematically and strategically swindle money from an unspecified number of victims, we have decided on the sentence.”
